Born: July 23, 1849 (birth name: Alfred Wyatt-Edgell, legally changed to Verney-Cave in 1880).
Died: July 1, 1928, Windsor, Berkshire, England.
Buried: St. Nicholas churchyard, Stanford-on-Avon, Northamptonshire, England.
Verney-Cave was the son of Edgell Wyatt-Edgell (rector of North Cray, Kent) and Henrietta Otway-Cave, and husband of Cecilia Harriet Walmesley (married 1873).
He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.
He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1870, and was a Knight of Malta
He joined the Leicestershire Militia, and commanded the 3rd Battalion during the Boer War. He spent weeks in a Cape Town hospital, and received the South African medal.
Nineteen hundred years of waiting,
Nineteen hundred years of prayer!
Age on age consumed with hoping
Hopes that just tread down despair;
Christ, that Thou wouldst rise and end it,
Crush the world or make it free,
Bring Thy kingdom down amongst us,
Come, or take us unto Thee!
For the world is sick with sinning,
Rotten to her inmost core;
Children sin and die, but dying,
Leave their sons to sin the more;
Israel prays with tears and groanings,
God of love, Thy kingdom come!
Hear the prayer which Thou hast taught us,
Take us quickly to our home.
Yes! the world is dull and senseless,
Deaf as asps were famed to be,
Listless to the sweet enchantments
Of the Gospel’s melody;
Trampling on Christ’s blood so vilely,
That at length that blood must cry,
Sevenfold louder than did Abel’s,
Vengeance, vengeance, from on high!
Stay Thy hand, great God of justice,
Mercy yet shall play her part;
Love rejected sows resentment,
Dragon teeth in man’s poor heart;
But Immortal Love knows pity
E’en for such as laugh it down;
Mercy tempers retribution,
Rebels yet may wear the crown.
Alfred Thomas Townshend Verney-Cave
Poems, 1881